


every year I'm older in despair

by brinnanza



Category: Rusty Quill Gaming (Podcast)
Genre: Gen, Introspection, idek what this is it's just sasha being sad and resigned and missing brock, paris-typical angst, takes place during that week in the ordinateurs' basement
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-16
Updated: 2019-12-16
Packaged: 2021-02-25 23:27:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 674
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21813664
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brinnanza/pseuds/brinnanza
Summary: Brock is gone. Brock has always been gone, and Sasha has always known.
Relationships: Brock & Sasha Racket
Comments: 6
Kudos: 36





	every year I'm older in despair

**Author's Note:**

> one of my favorite things lyd does with sasha is just straight up say her internal monologue but there wasn't time for it with mr ceiling really so here's this. the title is from the mechanisms' "pieces".

If Sasha is honest with herself, a part of her had known the whole time. Not because Brock would have come back for her, although he would have, but because there has only ever been one way out of Barrett’s grasp for kids like them. They don’t get to escape, slum kids from Other London, and Sasha knows that the same fate waits for her one day. 

Sasha is a practical woman, never much one for denial, but there’s a candle flame of hope guttering within her still, irrational and persistent. The lights click on overhead in the cavernous chamber, revealing the massive collection of columns, the fleshy matter held within them. Her own heart beats rabbit-fast within her chest and she knows, as the voice says _I missed you, Sasha_ and snuffs out any remaining doubt for Brock’s fate, that there is no such thing as freedom.

Brock is gone. Brock has always been gone, and Sasha has always known.

The voice speaks to her with Brock’s words, tells her things only Brock could know, about their games, about her red dice. It’s not his voice, too mechanical, too cold, pronouncing every sound in every word like it has all the time in the world. Brock sounds like Sasha, sounds like dropped consonants and smeared vowels, sounds like underground and eels and _home_ , and she will never hear it again.

She could, though, she thinks. If she asked. The machine had perfectly replicated Bertie’s voice, and Sasha has no doubt it could do the same for Brock’s, recreate his voice from nothing and play it back for her. It has been so long since she’s heard it, heard _him_ , and its absence is a hollow in her chest she’s not sure can be filled. Even now, all these years later, there are nights she spends curled up around the memory of his laugh, and she misses him, desperately, like a sheath misses its blade, like part of her is missing.

It’s not him, the voice in the ceiling. But it’s not _not_ him. There’s a piece of him here still, the only thing that remains besides her memories, so she talks to it, helps it to understand what it used to be. It’s the closest thing to closure she’ll ever get, and it’s not Brock she’s apologizing to when she says _I’m sorry I didn’t save you_ , but it’s not _not_ him either.

And the truth is, there was never anything Sasha could have done. She knows this, just as surely as she knows on sight whose purse can spare a silver for nimble fingers and whose can’t. Her hands have held countless things, knives and locks and valuable antiques, but her fingers have never grasped power. Not like Barrett. Not like this machine. Not even like her companions, who can purchase it with more money than she’s ever seen.

The futility of the last ten years of searching does not surprise her. Knowing doesn’t strike like lightning, a flash of bright white understanding. It aches, dull, like the phantom pain in the finger she cut off, bone-deep and lingering. She has always known what Barrett is capable of, has always known Brock was lost to her. Her chest is cold without that candle flame of hope to sustain her, but she thinks it had only ever been a memory of warmth, not the real thing. She has always known.

It’s the least she can do now, to know. It hurts, that certainty, but worse than knowing is forgetting. If she tries to leave this place, the thing that is and is not Brock will make her forget, will spark to life that useless hope that she might yet find him, whole and unharmed. He will still be gone, still be _here_ , but no one will _know_. 

When they destroy the machine, topple its empire of control as Sasha knows the others are planning, all that remains of Brock will be Sasha’s own memories.

It’s not him. But it’s not _not_ him either.


End file.
